


The Clock Is Another Demon

by edenbound



Series: If We Wake To Discover [Crowley and Aziraphale raise Adam] [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Other, non-binary Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 16:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21479458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenbound/pseuds/edenbound
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley get together, two years before Adam's fateful eleventh birthday.Set during 'If We Wake To Discover', starting shortly after 'You Ask Your Hands To Bleed' and ending after 'Our Time in Eden'. Mostly, you just need to know that Aziraphale and Crowley decided to raise Adam together.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: If We Wake To Discover [Crowley and Aziraphale raise Adam] [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1436134
Comments: 6
Kudos: 56





	The Clock Is Another Demon

**Author's Note:**

> There is no overt sexuality in this story. Crowley is genderfluid/non-binary, and their pronouns change throughout. There is no conflict related to their gender; as in canon, it just is.
> 
> You probably do want to read this series in the order on the series page, but you only really need to read 'If We Wake To Discover' to understand all of the others in whatever order you like.
> 
> Title is from 'Eden' by 10,000 Maniacs. [Lyrics](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/10000maniacs/eden.html); [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB0C2g7851U).

"You keep... touching me," Crowley says, apropos of approximately nothing. Aziraphale looks up from checking through Adam's homework, reading glasses slipping down his nose and eyes faintly perplexed.

"What?"

"You keep touching me," they say, again. They're fidgeting, fingers tapping the table, the lunchbox that's sitting ready for Adam and the school run. "You... held my hand, the other day. And when Adam found out about being a demon, you... put your arms around me."

Aziraphale puts the homework down. He didn't quite picture this happening in quite this way, if he ever pictured it at all. He never thought to imagine the utter bewilderment on Crowley's face, the genuine confusion, though it makes sense because he can almost see it written across their face every day: _how could he want me, a demon? How could he ever want me, defiled and unforgiven and unforgiveable?_

It's true that at first Aziraphale berated himself with those reasons, turned his face away from the reality of how interwoven they were becoming, of how dear and how necessary Crowley so quickly became. It helped when he realised Crowley cared about humans, helped more when he saw Crowley as a father and a mother, when he saw that Crowley almost couldn't help it when faced with a helpless lonely child. He can't say exactly when things fell into place, but perhaps it wasn't until he saw Crowley on the doorstep with the basket containing Adam. Perhaps it wasn't until after that, when he saw Crowley supporting Adam's first steps (and letting him fall, holding back their own instincts to help too much in order to let Adam take his own stumbling steps, hard-won). Perhaps it wasn't until that day at the school gate, when it seemed more natural to reach out and take Crowley's hand than it did not to.

"Yes," Aziraphale says, gently, rather than say all that. "I did."

"_Why_?"

There's a clatter of feet on the stairs, signalling the end of peace, and Aziraphale sighs. Leans across the table to brush his lips over Crowley's, a promise. "Because I love you, dearest. My turn to take him to school, I think?"

Adam is in a hurry to get to school, and in the whirlwind of getting his shoes laced up properly[1] and leaving, then coming back for his homework and then again for his lunchbox, there's no time for more. Crowley sits at the kitchen table throughout, fingers resting lightly on their lips in wonder.[2]

* * *

We should probably talk, dearest,” Aziraphale says, when he finally gets home. Crowley _has_ actually moved in the meantime, and a casual miracle has tidied up the kitchen and stacked the cereal bowls in the sink ready for Adam’s chores later.[3]

“I suppose so,” Crowley says. They’re wearing their sunglasses inside, for once, which Aziraphale correctly reads as a safeguard against further vulnerability. Well, there’s only one thing to do about that, and Aziraphale does it: he reaches up, carefully tugging the glasses off.

“I do love your eyes, dearest,” he says, and yields to an impulse when Crowley immediately closes them as if to deny the possibility. He leans in and kisses each eyelid.

They jerk back. “Angel, you can’t – ”

“We’re doing all sorts of things we shouldn’t, these days,” Aziraphale says, “so what’s one more?”

“This is different. This is…” Crowley shakes their head. “It’s just not done.”

Aziraphale takes a deep breath. “I want to do this. Nobody’s ever raised the Antichrist before. No one’s ever fallen from Heaven and then rebelled against Hell before, either. You’re so very brave, Crowley, and I – I’m not sure I could be as brave without you, but I don’t have to be. Do I?”

“Never,” Crowley says, letting Aziraphale reel them in close again, awkwardly yielding. “I’m here as long as you want me.”

Aziraphale smiles at them, letting their foreheads bump together. Their mouths are just inches apart. “That could be a very long time.”

* * *

“It won’t be a long time,” Crowley says, a blissful week or two later. He’s sprawled out across their bed, hands tucked behind his head, watching Aziraphale get dressed again to go and pick Adam up from school, after a lazy (and highly satisfactory) afternoon in bed.

Aziraphale would like to deny it, would like to say that he’s sure the world won’t end, that what they’re doing will change everything. But he’s not good at lying, except perhaps to himself, and Crowley’s words bring the thought out into the harsh light of day. “I know.”

“Two years,” Crowley says, quietly, and Aziraphale drops his bowtie and crosses the room to Crowley, slips a hand under his head and lifts him to meet a kiss fierce and sweet.

“We’ll make it marvellous,” he promises.

He’s late to pick Adam up from school for the only time anyone can remember, that day.

* * *

At this point, Adam is nine and a half years old. In the meantime, Crowley has continued his hobby of shouting at his plants, although he has moderated the intensity of the threats somewhat in deference to the presence of a child. He has also acquired a delightful new hobby.[4]

“Stress baking,” he explains, when Adam and Aziraphale get back from a day trip to the British Museum to find the kitchen covered with racks of various cupcakes, biscuits, muffins and Victoria sponges. “Mrs B from the end of the road said that’s what she does. And I thought, well, Aziraphale would definitely like some of these, so I…” He makes a vague gesture at the cornucopia of baked goods.

“She makes the best cookies,” Adam says, brightly, “and leaves them to cool on the windowsill.”

Aziraphale is immediately concerned, despite the delicious smell. “You don’t steal them, do you, Adam?” he asks, anxiously.

“’Course not! She leaves them there on purpose so’s we _can_ take them,” Adam informs him. “Her kids are all grown up now and she _likes_ baking for us.”

“Well, that must be alright then,” Aziraphale says, but with the principle of _trust but verify_ firmly in mind, and a conversation with Mrs B planned for the near future.

“So… can I have some, Dad?” Adam asks, hand hovering over a rack of gingerbread circles.[5]

“Yeah,” Crowley says, with an air of nonchalance that both Aziraphale and Adam can see right through. “Go ahead. I got rid of all the mistakes, anyway.”[6]

“You didn’t _waste_ any, did you?”

Crowley looks furtive. “Fed them to Mr Smith’s dog. With any luck, the mutt will die of it.”

“_Crowley_,” Aziraphale says, reprovingly.[7]

“Come on,” his demon says, coaxingly, a teasing look in his eyes. “You need to try them too. There’s plenty for everyone, after all. No need to stint yourself.” He holds out a plate. “Let me tempt you.”

Aziraphale takes the plate and loads it with several biscuits and a slice of cake. After a moment’s hesitation, he adds a rather sticky-looking muffin as well.

They don’t eat a proper dinner that evening, and Adam is rather copiously sick at around 7:30pm. It doesn’t stop him for long.

* * *

Adam’s tenth birthday is an Event. Crowley and Aziraphale are up early, wrapping the last presents, packing goody-bags for the other children to take home, and forgetting all about the oven timer on the cupcakes in favour of kissing each other senseless. Crowley somehow has tape stuck in her hair when Aziraphale lets her escape to the kitchen to rescue the cakes.

When he goes into the kitchen later, Aziraphale finds the cupcakes cooling on a rack with a sternly worded note propped up by their side. ‘These are for the party. Do NOT take any. I have COUNTED them.’

Crowley has drawn a pair of demonic eyes on the note. It’s really rather sweet, Aziraphale thinks, purloining two cupcakes and taking them up to wake Adam.

Just one cupcake for breakfast won’t hurt.

* * *

A week before Adam’s eleventh birthday. “It’s been marvellous,” Aziraphale says, softly. He thinks of all the things they’ve shared – the stress-baking and the birthdays, the lazy Sundays and the museum trips and the school runs. Crowley is beside him in the warm dark, as sleepless now as he is.

“It has, angel,” Crowley says, just as softly. “I’ve… been happy.”

Aziraphale swallows down a lump in his throat. “I have been happy too, dearest. Maybe… maybe it won’t be the end. Maybe we’ve made a difference. Maybe… maybe nothing will happen. Maybe nothing will change.”

Crowley rolls over onto his side, putting his arm over Aziraphale. His voice is tired. “I don’t know, angel.”

Aziraphale presses his lips to Crowley’s temple, to his brow, to the bridge of his nose. “I don’t regret it, whatever happens. I’m glad I’ve shared this with you. I’m afraid that without you, without Adam in our lives, I might have done very foolish things. I might not have been able to do all this, until it was too late and I’d already lost you.”

“You’d have done fine, in the end,” Crowley says, and it’s the surest he’s sounded about anything in weeks. “You’re the best of them all, angel.”

“I don’t care about them anymore, only you. Only you and Adam.”

Crowley’s eyes glitter in the darkness. “Here as long as you want me.”

“Forever,” Aziraphale replies.

* * *

“Look!” Adam says, coming into the biscuity-smelling kitchen on his birthday with a bit of old rope in his hand and on the other end of that rope, a dog whose claws click against the tiled flooring like the second hand of a frantic clock. “I’m going to call him Dog.”

_And in that time kind words alone will teach us, no bitterness will reach us._  
_Reason will be guided in another way._  
_All in time..._  
_But the clock is another demon that devours our time in Eden,_  
_in our paradise._  


\-- from 'Eden', by 10,000 Maniacs.

* * *

* * *

[1] Aziraphale cannot understand the fashion for untied laces being simply tucked into trainers, and he won’t stand for it.

[2] Aziraphale has always wondered if that really happened in real life, or if it was just a staple of romantic cinema. Now he has his answer, though admittedly Crowley has an unconscious turn for the dramatic in whatever he does.

[3] They are both agreed that Adam should do chores, in principle. In practice, he might complete about half of his chores, with discreet miracles performed by one parent or the other (unbeknownst to one another) to complete the rest and provide more time for reading, playing and generally doing other fun things. Homework, however, is a strictly no-miracle zone.

[4] At least, Aziraphale thinks it’s delightful. The corner shop owner is a bit more wary, given how difficult he is now finding it to keep a decent stock of eggs, flour and sugar. At any moment, Hurricane Crowley might hit again in order to obtain new ingredients, in bulk and _immediately_, and while he is on the surface perfectly calm about any deficit in egg supplies, the corner shop owner is painfully aware that still waters can run very deep indeed, and that there might be crocodiles in said waters.

[5] Crowley does not yet have a cookie cutter. By the end of the month he will have several in all kinds of novelty shapes, but both he and Adam tend to favour the dinosaur shapes that come as a free gift with a magazine bought solely for the free gift.

[6] There were a lot of them, but mostly committed during the first part of the day. Things have been going well for some hours, and Crowley is cautiously pleased.

[7] As a matter of fact, though, Aziraphale has never liked that dog. It has no manners, and once stole Aziraphale’s newspaper to present to its owner. Adam doesn’t like the dog, either. It thinks itself above playing with children.


End file.
